Critic Reviews

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80

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As you can probably tell I am a fan of this game, I believe over the next few years this title could truly contend the major titles for a larger part of the market. There is work to be done before this will happen but I have lots of faith in the software house and am sure they will deliver. From being no more than an also-ran last year I think Club Football 2005 will make the likes of Konami and EA up their game or loose audience to this rising pretender.

Codemasters continues to stake a claim among football games elite with its latest release of Club Football. While it still has some way to go before it usurps Konami's mercurial Pro Evolution Soccer it still manages to deliver and should appeal widely to avid football fans of all ages.

So too round it all up, Club Football 2005 is a good development of the franchise with some genuine polished points, it is hard however to recommend this over FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer, although given a few more generations of development I am sure that it will be a contender, at the moment it is a football club in the Premier League fighting a relegation battle.

If you're looking for a general football game, and not for a piece of software merchandise, then you'll be disappointed with how the game plays. It's a long way behind the refined Pro Evolution Soccer 4 and isn't as good as FIFA Football 2005. Of course if you don't like either of those and prefer the zippy pace of football games of yesteryear such as Actua Soccer 2/3 then you might prefer how Club Football plays but I suspect this won't be the case for many out there. The attention to detail for the club in question is wonderful but it needs a better football game underneath it all to make it an essential purchase.

Some people may not be bothered by these problems, but those who are looking for a serious football simulation should look elsewhere for their kicks (sorry about that) as the game simply doesn’t resemble the sport in the slightest, not to mention that there are far better footy titles out there such as Pro Evolution Soccer 4 and Fifa 2005. Club Football 2005 is nowhere near the worst football game, but it’s still a long way from being the “beautiful game”. We don’t recommend joining this club.

At the end of the day, CF2005 never going to stand a chance against the 'big guns' of PES and Fifa – a football game is a football game, and while you can put more competitions/licenses in it, there's not a lot that you can do to differentiate a particular game from the rest except produce a better simulation of the beautiful game. While the Club Football series may one day be able to achieve this, Konami and EA have several years head start, and although CF2005 plays a solid game, it fails to excel in any area.

I won’t need to tell you that Pro Evolution Soccer 4 is the best football game ever made and will soon touch down to show everyone what I saw at Game Stars Live earlier this year. Not only will it be appearing on the world’s most powerful console, the Xbox, but will also make its debut on Xbox Live, making it a real treat. Of course, there’s only room in this world for one great football game, and that’s PES4. So where does Codemasters Club Football 2005 come into this? Unfortunately, on a par with This is Football seems to be the nicest thing I can say.